So, I should preface a bit by saying, I am a very casual level player of Pokemon Go. I mean maybe I am overestimating the level of most players, but I often see people talking about burning through hundreds of Pokemon and eggs and stardust to maximize this or that. There are gyms an raids that I barely ever participate in. My interest in Pokemon Go extends mostly to “It’s Pokemon” because it’s not really Pokemon. It’s more, incentivized walking. Which is also why I care about Pokemon Go, at all. Primarily I “play” at lunch, I eat, I go walk a loop downtown outside my office. What I really wanted to help with this, was a way to spin Pokestops and catch Pokemon, without having to carry my phone in my hand and look at my phone constantly.
Enter the Pokemon Go Plus, and in my case, the Pokemon Go-tcha band. I had been looking at getting a PoGo+ for a while, but I had heard they were kind of flaky, and you still had to press a button to actually perform an action (catching or spinning). Then I found the 3rd party Go-tcha band, which is identical in function to the Plus, except it auto spins and auto catches. The Go-tcha also has an internal rechargeable batter, the PoGo+ has a replaceable battery. After using the band for a few months, it’s not perfect, but the short of it is, it work for my needs. It does what it proposes and works pretty well.
I have a few little gripes and there are some oddities to it, which I want to get into a bit and is the whole point of writing this, but I am 99% sure that these are all limitations put in place, intentionally or not, in Pokemon Go itself.
So a bit of an overview of what exactly the Go-tcha does, a lot of this applies to the PoGo+ as well. Depending on the settings in the app itself and on the band, it will automatically scan the area and spin Pokestops or catch Pokemon. It’s not an end all to auto-playing PoGo however. The catching will throw one regular Pokeball. That’s it. If it catches, you get the Pokemon, if it doesn’t the Pokemon flees. It doesn’t throw Great or Ultra balls. This can be a little frustrating at times, I’ve been at a point where I had 100 Great and Ultra balls, but zero regular Pokeballs, which means the band does nothing. This is a limitation of how Pokemon Go works however, the regular PoGo+ works the same way, except you have to click the button to do the throw.
The Go-tcha also has some options that can be toggled, by tapping the button, to cycle through, and holding it to toggle. I am not sure the regular PoGo+ has these options. The toggle-able options in order, all on/off, are Spin Pokestops, Catch Pokemon, Catch Unique Pokemon, Vibration, and Bluetooth. You can conserve Pokeballs by either disabling the catching, or setting it to catch only Pokemon that you don’t already have. In my testing, and this may be wrong, but it’s based on what I’ve seen, this has some limitations. The Pokemon Go app itself seems to prioritize it’s actions, it will search for and target Pokemon then target Pokestops. As far as I can tell, you must disable Pokemon scanning int he settings of the app itself if you want to only spin Pokestops. I find I do maybe one walk a week with spinning only to replenish my stock of Pokeballs. Depending on the density, it’s pretty easy to pull in 50 Pokeballs or so with 20-30 minutes of walking.
Now, like I said, turning off Pokemon scanning seems to be required, but only because of what seems to be a limitation of Pokemon Go itself. Basically, what I have seen happen, is that the app will target the first Pokemon it sees, then stick to it, until you try to catch it with the band. This also affects catching unique Pokemon for the same reason. If you have the band itself set to only throw at unique Pokemon, it may catch on a Pidgey you have, while you walk past a Dratini or something that you don’t have. Because it will get stuck on the Pidgey waiting for the band to do something. The best use cases for the band, are to either turn off Pokemon scanning in Pokemon Go and only spin stops, or keep everything on full boar, and let it go to town.
It does keep up well in full on mode. It targets and catches the Pokemon fast enough that it should also catch and spin Pokestops. I also have found it works even when driving at a reasonable speed (40mph or less), often catching Pokemon that don’t even show up on the map. Don’t play PoGo while driving kids, but if you’ve just got a Go-tcha laying in the seat next to your phone, you aren’t exactly interacting with anything. In my experience though, the screen still has to be on, which seems to be another annoying limitation of Pokemon Go itself. If the screen is off, it doesn’t seem to update your location, you can watch your character run to catch up once you turn the screen back on. So when using the band you can shove your phone in your pocket, but it still has to be on, so it’s easy to bump the screen by mistake and screw things up.
There also isn’t really enough notification when you’re item bag or Pokemon bag is full. The app simply stops catching or spinning when this happens. It’s fairly easy to fill up as well, I find I am constantly tossing out berries. You can of course remedy this by buying more bag space. Once again, more of a limitation of the game than anything. I have also had some connectivity issues which are usually resolved by resetting the app or phone, or deleting and repairing the device. This is also a known issue with the official Pokemon Go Plus band, and it not unique to the Go-tcha.
The Go-tcha band itself has a few quirks. It has no on/off function that I can find. So it’s always on. You recharge it by sticking it in a little USB cradle. The Go-tcha itself is maybe a centimeter by a centimeter by 2 centimeters, it reminds me a lot of my old Fitbit flex. There are no ports on it, just two little contacts for charging. It has one touch sensitive area on one end of the display. There are little animations that play on it as it does things. You can buy third party bands, which is good for two reasons. One, the band that comes with it is this speckled red white and black thing that’s ugly as hell. Two, the band that comes with it is effectively child sized, it doesn’t fit at all around my wrist. I just carry it in my pocket. A word of warning on this, I have found that having other things in your pocket (like pocket change) can accidentally change the settings on the unit. It’s best to keep it in the band, even if you aren’t wearing it because frankly, it’s easy to loose, it’s so small.
Real quick before wrapping up, I wanted to run through a bit of other little thing it does and does not do. It will spin Gyms, but it does not battle in gyms or raids in any way. If the bag fills up, it won’t keep spinning stops, and there isn’t any filter for say, “only keep rare items and Pokeballs”. It only throws once at any given Pokemon, no matter how rare, and afterwards that Pokemon is gone. So if you want a particular Pokemon, you need to play normally and manually throw balls. Pokemon caught with the band do count towards Field Research, if it says “Catch 3 Water Pokemon”, it doesn’t matter if you caught them with the band or manually. Spinning stops also counts towards research. Using the band still lets you hatch eggs, though you don’t get a notification that it’s happening.
So wrapping this up, with a little TL;DR, the band works as expected, and frankly, if you want to be able to walk and play PoGo distraction free, it’s worth picking up. I had my doubts going in but after hem-hawing about it for months, I just bit the bullet. I wouldn’t pay much mark up on it though, I have seen the PoGo+ for I think $30-$35 and the Gotcha for $40-$45, but both are often marked up a lot more, the prices already feel like they are pushing it for the value depending on how casual you are about playing the game. I kind of wish it included a little more incentive like maybe the one throw Pokeballs didn’t count towards your owned balls or something.
